When the matron gazed at this sweet and lovely young girl she marveled that any man's heart could have been cold and harsh enough to turn against such charms and leave that young heart to die of despair, or madden with its cruel wrongs. "She is beautiful and refined enough for a king's bride," the matron said, with an angry thought of the monster in man's likeness who had brought the young girl to this pass. She waited eagerly for a letter to come from Miss Watts, the girl's aunt, hoping and praying that she would take her away, and not leave her to die at the asylum. Tears came into her kind old eyes as she thought of herself robing this beautiful form for the grave, and folding those waxen white hands on the weary breast for the last long sleep. She did not tell Kathleen she had written to her aunt to take her away, because she feared the effect of a disappointment. She waited silently, and at last the letter came. Miss Watts was an old woman--a soured old maid, who had not much patience with love and lovers, and who had been much disgusted with her niece for losing her senses over a man's perfidy. She was blind, and her pretty niece had been eyes and hands to her before her trouble. Now she had to depend on servants entirely, and she was crosser than ever. She grumbled very much at the idea of her niece's return. "A nice place this will be--me blind and Daisy insane," she grumbled; but the thought of the young girl's fading so fast in the asylum touched her, and she had her maid to write that the girl might come home if they were quite, quite sure she was harmless and would not make any trouble. So Mrs. Hoover, the kind-hearted matron, came herself to bring Kathleen home to her aunt, for she wanted to explain to the old lady the young girl's strange fancy that she was not Daisy Lynn at all, but Kathleen Carew, a beautiful young Boston heiress, who had been mysteriously murdered in the vicinity of the asylum, and of whom the poor lunatic had chanced to hear in her wanderings. So Kathleen came into her new home an utter stranger, but was received as belonging to it. The servants were new, and the old lady was blind. She could not see the face of her niece, and she attributed the strange tone of her voice to her illness. She passed her long, delicate fingers carefully over Kathleen's face, and exclaimed in surprise at its delicacy of outline. Kathleen overwhelmed Mrs. Hoover with kisses and thanks, and called her her benefactress for securing her release from the asylum. "I should have died or gone mad in reality if I had been kept there much longer; but now I shall go away from here and find my friends," she said, hopefully. Mrs. Hoover looked very much alarmed at this declaration. "My dear, if I had thought you would run away, I would not have brought you here," she exclaimed, uneasily.